Firstly, I’d like to give a warm welcome to all new and returning students at Uni SA and I hope your year this year is a memorable one.

Throughout February, while many students have been holidaying it up (jealous af), I’ve been extremely busy settling into my new role as Mawson Lakes representative for 2016. Here’s a summary of some of what I’ve been up to:

1) Working as convenor of the Election Regulations & Constitution Committee (ERCC) and the Finance Committee.

I’ve been elected as convenor of both of these committees and have been working throughout the month with them. Most particularly, I’ve been working with members of the ERCC to start formulating a timeline for a huge reform process on the USASA constitution. This process has been set to be undertaken over a two year period to ensure the reforms are comprehensive and are done with proper consultation and support. We also want to ensure that these reforms create a modern constitution that properly and inclusively represents the students and staff who are apart of this university.

2) Helping out with O-Week

In my capacity as Mawson Lakes Representative I worked throughout O-Week to meet many new students and help them settle in to university life by giving out information and material from our USASA stalls about who we are, what we do and how we can help. We also gave out a 2016 diary, planner and many other things – if you missed out on getting a diary then head over to your campus USASA office where they hopefully have some left over from O-Week.

3) Beginning the process to introduce food trucks at Mawson Lakes and Magill

Mawson Lakes and Magill are both great campuses (especially Mawson Lakes campus) but there is one thing they both lack – cheap and diverse food options. As university students we already have it tough financially with two-thirds of university students living below the poverty line. One way I think USASA and the university could combat this is attempt to make food on campus cheaper with more variety, especially including vegetarian, vegan, and halal food options. That’s why Lisa Bennetts (my fellow Mawson Lakes representative) and I thought up a great idea to achieve this, and that would be food trucks – where competition should drive down prices and increase quality and variety. Lisa and I have had a meeting with the staff at USASA who think it’s a great idea and so now we’re in the consultation and surveying stage of our process. We’re working on a survey to show support for the idea at Magill and Mawson Lakes as well as consulting businesses that would be interested in setting up food vans on our campuses – while this process may take some time, Lisa and I are dedicated to creating a proposal to USASA and the university by the end of the year.

I look forward to continuing my work and working on new things in the following month.